Not Quite a Million Moms

Alternative gun groups to watch.

National Review Online.
May 15, 2001 12:35 p.m. More by Kopel on
anti-gun groups.

The "Million" Mom March rally in
Washington, D.C., on Mother's Day, drew about 100 people, according to
CNN.

In
Nashville, the MMM obtained a permit for a rally at the state capitol, but
didn't even show up. At the
MMM rallies around the country, crowds tended to around the size of
the D.C. rally.

At
most MMM rally sites, pro-rights demonstrators, led by the
Second Amendment Sisters
(sometimes in conjunction with the Tyranny Response Team) staged
counterprotests.

A
few weeks beforehand, the MMM had laid off 30 of its 35 paid staff. And
thanks to outstanding investigative work by
www.keepandbeararms.com, the MMM was expelled from its offices in San
Francisco General Hospital. The MMM had obtained office space from the
Trauma Foundation, without SF General's knowledge, and was using the space
for lobbying, in violation of the city-owned hospital's rules.

The
MMM was the darling of the media in the spring of 2000, but its abysmal
election results in November have shown both politicians and the media
that the group had little of the grassroots political power that it
claimed.

Now, the leading organizations in the anti-gun movement are two groups
which were unknown a year ago.
Americans
for Gun Safety is the creation of the billionaire founder of
Monster.com. Its goal
differ little from those of
Handgun Control,
Inc., (HCI) on whose board the AGS billionaire used to serve. But
AGS--in sharp contrast from MMM, HCI, and most of the rest of the anti-gun
movement — avoid incendiary rhetoric attacking gun owners or gun
manufacturers.

The
other anti-gun group worth watching is the
Violence Policy Center (VPC),
a non-lobbying educational organization which explicitly favors
prohibition of handguns and a huge number of shotguns and rifles, and
which criticizes other anti-gun groups for timidity and incrementalism.

Two
years ago, Handgun Control, Inc., was king of the anti-gun movement. Led
by Sarah Brady, the group had achieved unprecedented success in promoting
gun control at the federal level, and had achieved important victories in
some states. But the 2000 election results also hurting HCI, which can
legitimately take responsibility for Al Gore's defeat and for continued
Republican control of the House of Representatives, as well as for the
1994 Republican take-over of Congress. Newsweek reports that the
group is planning on changing its name, having belatedly discovered that
"control" isn't something that resonates well in American political
culture.

HCI's educational/legal spinoff, the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence,
is having trouble too. The group is swimming in money, with tremendous
support from Hollywood and foundations. But the CPHV's flagship project —
promoting government lawsuits against handgun manufacturers, retailers,
wholesalers, and trade organizations — has been a bust. Following
well-established precedent, many courts have dismissed the lawsuits as a
transparent attempt to win in court what the anti-gun groups cannot win in
the legislature. If the suits are to survive anywhere, their best
prospects are in Ohio and (to a lesser degree) in California, where
anti-gun civil lawsuits are before the state supreme courts, and in
Boston.

As
a political tactic, the lawsuits have been a pure loser. While HCI/CPHV
have usually been adroit at framing issues (like waiting periods and
"assault weapon" bans) which have intuitive appeal to a majority of the
public, opinion polls show that a large majority of the public opposes the
lawsuits. This is one reason why 26 state legislatures have now enacted
laws banning such vexatious suits.

The
process of lobbying for the anti-lawsuit laws has helped the NRA build
closer ties with mainstream business groups, which recognize that if the
gun lawsuits succeed, many other product manufacturers and distributors
will be vulnerable to similar suits. Indeed, they will be more vulnerable,
since guns are sold under a
regulatory system that is stricter than the regulations for any other
major consumer product except prescription drugs. If full compliance with
strict regulation isn't sufficient protection from legal liability, then
compliance with the looser regulations for alcohol, fast food, and other
products would likewise be legally insufficient.

A
second political effect of the lawsuits is that, for the first time in
history, the American firearms industry has been shaken from its torpor,
and begun major political and public education efforts, rather than simply
relying on the consumer-oriented
National Rifle Association.

The
only company that caved in to the CPHV lawsuits was Smith & Wesson, which
was acting under orders of its British parent, the conglomerate Tomkims
PLC. As detailed by sources such as MSNBC and the National Journal, the
"Smith & Wesson sell-out" has been a disaster for the company. Consumer
revulsion at S&W's betrayal of Second Amendment principles has seriously
cut sales, no new government contracts materialized as a result of the S&W
settlement, and hardly any of the anti-S&W lawsuits have been dismissed.

The
S&W disaster has also reinforced solidarity within the rest of the
firearms industry. Thus, the CPHV's lawsuits have accomplished a feat
which gun rights activists had failed to accomplish: turning firearms
companies into a united, active, highly-engaged political force.

According to Fortune, the National Rifle Association is now rated
as one of the two most powerful lobbies in Washington, a remarkable
comeback from April-May 1999, when a media frenzy over Columbine sent the
NRA reeling.

When serving as United States Representative from Wyoming, Dick Cheney was
so strongly supportive of Second Amendment rights that he even
voted against two (relatively mild) gun-control laws which the NRA
supported. As vice president, Cheney has been put in charge of firearms
policy for the Bush administration. Notwithstanding President Reagan's
pro-gun rhetoric, the current Bush administration is far more closely
allied with the gun rights movement — and staffed by strong Second
Amendment supporters — than any administration since the days of Jefferson
and Madison. This is a remarkable change from the Clinton administration,
which was the only administration in American history with a comprehensive
anti-gun agenda that permeated the executive branch. Some previous
presidents, such as Lyndon Johnson and George Bush III, had supported
isolated gun control laws, but had not devoted their tenure in office to a
war on the Second Amendment.

NRA
Executive Vice-President Wayne LaPierre's campaign to restore the NRA to
its traditional status as a mainstream organization has succeeded. One
result is that 33 states now have laws guaranteeing that law-abiding
adults can
obtain a permit to carry a concealed handgun in public for lawful
protection. The right to carry was, as a practical matter, destroyed in
almost all the United States by gun laws which were enacted as a result of
alcohol prohibition violence in the 1920s and 1930s, and of racial unrest
in the 1960s. The contemporary renaissance of concealed carry has saved
many thousands of lives, and deterred or foiled hundreds of thousands of
violent crimes.

The
new handgun carry laws are also playing a major role in bringing
legitimate firearms ownership even further into the mainstream of American
thought. From Florida to Alaska — and most places in-between — Americans
who don't own guns are getting used to the idea that the woman sitting
next to them on the bus might have a Glock 9mm in her purse. And (contrary
to the hysterical and mean-spirited warnings of the anti-gun groups), she
poses no threat to anyone except a violent predator.

In
order to pass concealed carry laws, the NRA sometimes supports regulations
which offend Second Amendment purists — such as requiring a license
applicant to pass a safety training class. Similarly, the NRA sometimes
supports (or does not oppose) limited gun control legislation in order to
maintain good working relationships with elected officials.

The
NRA's mainstream success, in turn, has led some gun rights advocates to
shift their support to
Gun Owners of America (GOA); the group's lobbyists have little clout
with most offices on Capitol Hill, but the GOA's e-mail and fax grassroots
network has become extremely effective. GOA was the most important
organization behind the failure in the last two Congresses of Senator
Orrin Hatch's bill to federalize much of the juvenile justice system.
Because of GOA's strong conservative grassroots network, and its
libertarian leanings, GOA has developed good working relationships with
left-leaning civil liberties groups in Washington, such as the American
Civil Liberties Union, and the National Association of Criminal Defense
Lawyers.

While GOA may have a good relationship with the national ACLU, its
relationship with the NRA is acrimonious. Yet ironically, the better that
GOA does, the better for the NRA. Membership defections to GOA haven't
exactly crippled the NRA, which now has record four million members. And
the more attention that GOA's grassroots generates, the more the NRA can
present itself, quite accurately, as a reasonable organization which
lawmakers can work with.

There is still a long way to go before all the infringements on the Second
Amendment are removed, and there are still serious new threats to Second
Amendment rights, such as
gun-show amendments that will be offered to the education bill which
comes before the Senate soon; the effort to close the non-existent "gun
show loophole" is simply an incremental step towards putting every gun
owner in a government database, which itself is an
incremental step towards confiscation.

And
the greatest asset of the anti-gun prohibition — the media — has hardly
decided that Second Amendment rights deserve even a tenth as much
protection as First Amendment rights. Even so, Mother's Day 2001 found
even the media acknowledging that political momentum is on the side of gun
rights. That's quite a contrast from two years ago, and it's good news for
mothers, children, and everyone else concerned with public safety.

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